Second Time Around
by paradiso
Summary: Stella/Mac. And all this time, she thought they were speeding to opposite ends of the universe.


a/n: friendship or more? you tell me.

**Second Time Around**

By the time I was twenty-four, I had all but given up on Mac Taylor.

At twenty-four, I had just wrapped up a Masters in Biochemistry, and was meandering my way around the so-called best years of my life. I spent the mornings in bed, with a lethargic cat and an occasional chapter from _Persuasion_ as my only company. I usually managed to stumble into the kitchen, half-alive by ten o' clock to fix myself a wholesome breakfast of previously-frozen orange juice and store-bought doughnuts.

The doughnuts were good. I was twenty-four, and had my first chance at being the fickle teenager that I had neglected most of my actual teenage years, so doughnuts offered variety. A few weeks of living on my own and I could no longer stand the Boston Cream doughnuts that I had so loved as a child. Too much of anything is a bad thing...

So then I moved on to other filled doughnuts, having not been quite ready to face that circular void that pierced through say, your average glazed doughnut. Strawberry, raspberry, blueberry... one time, a putrid lemon-flavoured substance that I could hardly stand... I tried them all. Week after week, it became like a ritual. One sugary doughnut, one glass of orange juice. I was well on my way to type-II diabetes.

Other things that happened when I was twenty four, well, in the afternoons I would knit. You know, scarves, or whatever. When I amassed enough money to invest in a good collection of chick flicks, the knitting became more frequent. So did the doughnuts.

When I was twenty four, I drifted through the conversations of old friends from school. I mean, they weren't _old_, they were twenty four too they were just... grown. Grown up. And I was... not. Or at least, I didn't really want to be.

Hey, give me a break okay? I'd never been a kid before until I reached my twenties. I was all out of responsibility and patience and virtue. Really, I just wanted to go out every night, get trashed, turn down eight guys before taking one home, and wake up every morning to a stranger, a doughnut and a new Buffy DVD. I didn't want to let go, and sure, I guess downing shots isn't really a children's activity... but it seemed to me at the time to be a youthful activity. Yeah, that's it. Youth.

Twenty four and I worked four days a week at a pregnancy clinic, doing one of those mundane, repetitive jobs that they show in advertisements for online certificate programs. Tests, tests, tests... I'm pretty sure the _Successful completion of a graduate studies program_ on the job application was just for show. Whatever. I could sleep until ten in the morning, and it paid well enough to fund my doughnut obsession.

You know, when you're twenty four, you've been alive for more than a fifth of a century. And in all that time, the only thing I could think of that I wanted to do was to lie around consuming doughnuts. And annoying my cat. And watching Buffy.

I'd thought about a PhD but... okay, I have mentioned the "is-twenty-four-has-a-masters-degree-and-is-funding-the-doughnut-industry" thing? I think it's safe to conclude that the score stood at _Motivation: Zero, Self-Indulgence: 2000_.

Twenty four and I ran into Mac Taylor for the first time in two years.

Unfortunately, I really _had _given up on him by then.

"Stella," he said, and you would think that it would've been phrased as a question, or at least laced with some kind of surprise surprise.

But no. Here, at a downtown bakery in _New York City_, for crying-out-loud, he said my name as though it was some irrefutable fact.

Which, I guess it was. I was there. In the room. Twenty four and carrying a box of doughnuts. And he was there too, his eyes the same tired blue they had always been, his frame a little fuller, his face a little fresher.

"Yo," I said most eloquently.

He was probably struggling not to arch an eyebrow, and instead offered a smile and to carry the box I was balancing on my forearms.

"Thanks," I said quickly.

"You headed somewhere?"

_Why yes, of course._ _Sunnydale, I hear, is lovely this time of year._

And I decided in that very instant, that if after two years of solitude, after two years of zero contact, two years of misery (on my part), two years of spending every waking minute wracking my brain trying to figure out just why I couldn't let go of this _Mac Taylor_, after all this, if I couldn't deny him well... that was it. I would be irrevocably linked to him for as long as he decided to stick around this time, and after that, maybe I would freeze to death in the time it would take for his shrinking shadow to disappear entirely.

It had been gone, with its owner, for almost two years then. And surprise, surprise, I hadn't let go. In my twentieth year, he'd been the best thing that had ever happened to me – at twenty four, he'd was the best thing that had ever happened to me twice.

"Nope," I shrugged.

Silence. I should've known.

"... what about you?"

He smiled, and replied, "Not in particular."

I wanted to sigh in response, but the breath got caught in my throat. He looked over to the seating area (which come to think of it, I had never really noticed before) and his eyes shone with the suggestion.

I panicked. My feet wouldn't move. They remained rooted to the wooden floor. Maybe I really had crystallized in his absence, maybe there wasn't enough hope in me to give it another chance.

But his hand was warm, so very warm, in the small of my back. So warm that in all my twenty-four years I could never have smiled as widely as I did then as he led me to the table, the gentle pressure never once leaving my back until after he'd pulled out a chair for me and then sat in one himself.

For a moment I was content to stare at him (actually, I would've been 'content to stare' for several years if time would have allowed), and in doing so I realized that I was ever so glad to have actually met him in college. Otherwise, he may have always just been 'that moody, genius kid'. Moody as he was... he had always been attractive, and I wasn't the only one who thought so. I lived in a dorm back then, and was just about as conscious about stuffing my face with anything other than celery as any other girl, so I spent plenty of time gorging on chemistry equations and useless chatter. Celery too. With cheese whiz, but only on special occasions. Like Christmas. And my birthday. And Tuesdays.

In fact, the only meaningful chatter came from the subject of the useless variety. Mac Taylor had never been much of a talker. He volunteered during lectures to speak, and could recall any amount of information flawlessly, and he seemed to have a healthy number of friends to eat lunch and go out with. His nerdy exterior was neutralized by the fact that well, we were _all_ pretty nerdy. His lack of social speech, rather than alienating him, gave him the air of a sophisticated foreigner.

One out of two wasn't so bad, I guess – he _was_ the sophisticated type, but definitely no foreigner. When we met, I shrugged off the butterflies that rustled around inside of me as he shook my hand. When we talked, you could tell he was genuinely interested in not just what he was saying, but whether or not the other person was listening. And if they weren't... I don't know. No one ever ignored Mac Taylor. When he spoke, people just listened, even when he spoke of ordinary things... school, the city, the world. He made them extraordinary.

It was inevitable that we would become friends. His charisma was well balanced out by his profound ability to listen to everything. And as much as I'd like to attribute my ability to babble incessantly to the girls in the dorm, it's probably my most distinguishing trait.

At twenty four, I restrained myself in his presence for the first time.

"You look good, Stella," he said, that smile still gracing his lips.

I thought to myself. I hadn't looked in a mirror since... well, since I'd started bingeing on doughnuts. For obvious reasons.

Otherwise, I didn't exactly look stunning. I'd basically just thrown on a long black trench. I looked down to discover that I was still wearing my pyjama pants, and I by that I mean... those embarrassing pink track suit bottoms that read _JUICY_ in huge white bubble letters down the side of one leg. Yeah, classy.

What they hell does it mean for a girl to be "juicy" anyways? Really. I almost asked the question aloud when I realized that Mac might actually _not_ have an answer to that one. And even if he did, I probably wouldn't want to hear it.

"You look good too," I said.

He still wore the same old black dress pants, and I would've bet anything that he had on a powder blue oxford underneath the black jacket that he apparently still had. He hadn't changed a bit. Whereas _I_ had changed a lot. I had given up on jeans, and skirts, and heels and make up and had probably put on an extra twenty pounds since the last time he saw me. Or I saw him. Or we saw each other.

Before we drifted apart.

No.

Before we graduated and promptly sped away at dangerous speeds to opposite ends of the freaking universe.

"I just got back from Chicago," he said.

"Oh?"

"Visited the family."

"Ah, that's nice," I replied, embarrassingly cheesed by the fact that he suddenly could speak so freely about his life and the 'family' I never even knew he had.

I guess it never came up. In fact, as I thought about it more and more, what the hell did we spend three years talking and laughing and debating about? We were so very different... even when I had some ambition in life. And right then, in the bakery, we were frozen on opposite sides of the spectrum. I shook my head, and called myself stupid. This was going nowhere.

"What have you been up to?" he interrupted my reverie, something that I found strangely annoying.

"I work at a clinic," I couldn't have sounded more bored with life even if I had tried, "And you?"

"I'm unemployed as of the moment."

"What?" I stared at him, genuinely surprised.

He chuckled, "I started working on a PhD a couple months ago but... I guess it wasn't for me."

"Wasn't for you?" I frowned, "You can't be serious."

He shrugged and went on smiling, "It just seemed pretty trivial to me. I'd been in school for something like... seventeen years."

"The bulk of your life," I whispered just loud enough for him to hear, "So, what are you going to do next?"

"I was thinking law enforcement."

I wanted to tell him _no_. That there was so much more he could do with his life... so much more he was qualified for, than working in some precinct. But my face burned with shame at that thought... there was perhaps nothing more noble than that occupation. And the more and more I thought about it, the more and more I realized that it was just _perfect_ for him. He was a man of justice, more so than any person I had ever known.

"You know what," I leaned forward and rested my chin upon my knuckles, "I think you'd be great at that."

"Really?"

"Mhm," and then suddenly, something slipped out, "Hope your girlfriend won't mind."

I know. I _know_. Obvious much? Desperate much? I wanted to sink into the ground. I'd sounded like one of those brainless dorm-room girls. I opened my mouth to apologize and then wondered what on Earth I was supposed to apologize for. Apologize for being curious? Inquisitive? Tactless?

_Interested?_

What a fine day it was turning out to be. I turned my head to the side, having felt no desire to study him, speechless in the seat across from mine. I stared behind the counter and watched a dismal employee spread peanut butter on a piece of burnt toast.

Jeez. Peanut butter. I hated peanut butter.

It reminded me how _clingy_ I could be sometimes. Whatever I touched, I stuck to, I infected. Here was Mac, an old friend I hadn't seen in years and two minutes into the conversation and I was treating him like some kind of rebound guy. I mean sure, maybe if we'd been in a _bar_, and maybe if I'd had a few shots of vodka, and maybe if he hadn't been _Mac Taylor_ I could've seen this working out. He could've been the ninth guy, the one I'd take home and kick out in the morning. You know. Before doughnuts.

"Stella?" he said cautiously, "You look kind of... upset."

I blinked and turned my gaze towards him, "Yeah well..."

"Well?"

"... nothing."

He looked down at the table and smoothed the cloth, almost nervously, "Um... look, sorry I haven't been in touch lately."

I blinked again and stared at him, wanting desperately to be satisfied with his apology.

Ah, but alas... I'm the most difficult person I know.

"Yeah, you really haven't."

From the look on his face I could tell he accepted that. The flicker of regret in his eyes made my heart melt and... ugh, I was back to square one. Doe-eyed and speechless and all... melty-hearted at the very sight of him. Basically, I was a wreck, and I wanted nothing more in that very moment than to leap towards him over the table, and sob into his neck about how lonely I was, and how much I missed him, and how _awful_ it was that Buffy and Angel could never be together...

But I had a feeling that he was really the _Buffy_ type. No, when it came to cult-classics, he was definitely more of an _X-Files_ person.

"I missed you though," he said finally.

Oh, the cheesiness. Cheese, cheese, cheese.

But it was the good kind of cheese. Camembert... or brie... you know, exquisite cheese. Not like the plastic kind that I would mindlessly wolf down when there was nothing else to eat but... fruit. Or vegetables. God forbid that I would consider for one moment consuming something even remotely nutritious.

Except maybe this cheese. Right now.

"Stella?" through the haze between us I could just barely see him arch a single elegant eyebrow, "You look kind of strange, are you alright?"

"Cheese... " classy, I know.

"Did you... want some?" he asked, struggling for words.

"Um... no."

"Oh."

"Yeah... I was just thinking about it."

"About cheese?"

"Yes. I have some at home. In the fridge," I said without thinking.

"Oh really?"

"Yes."

"I like cheese."

"Of course," a renewed enthusiasm, one which I hadn't felt in years, surged through me, "Who doesn't like cheese?"

In that instant we were college juniors again, sitting on a bench in Battery Park, him with a cup of coffee, and me with my daily hotdog, talking about nothing.

But those afternoons grew seldom... from everyday to four times a week, then three times... then twice... then opposite ends of the universe. Then two years of nothing. Then I was twenty-four years old in a bakery, nurturing a precious conversation about cheese and loving every second of it.

I don't know how long we sat there, or how we could have possibly entertained ourselves for any length of time after having returned to a friendship that had long since gone stale from abandonment. And I don't know how I could have gotten over the fact that I was dressed like a slob and mustered enough courage to take a glance at my half-visible reflection in the window of the shop.

There were undertones to the conversation. Something about DNA, the family he had left behind and the tiny apartment he was moving into next week (conveniently located two blocks East of mine). In return for the cherished glimpse into the life he was leading, the person he was becoming, I shared with him – after quite a few exasperating attempts – the tragic, post-Bachelor's existence that I was experiencing. The cat, the partying, the _Buffy_ marathons...

The doughnuts that I'm pretty sure you're all sick of hearing about by now.

He flashed that smile at me, winning in its own right, and I felt my knees despite their relaxed position lose all feeling. I played with the idea of a spontaneous kiss but concluded that it may have ruined the moment, the moment within which I was discovering the beauty of reconnecting with the one that got away.

Cheese. I know.

Speaking of which, at some point in the conversation in the midst of casual tidbits of information, like a crisis in Lebanon and a barista named Claire, I was delighted by thinking of how _cheese_ could really bring two people together.

Specifically, about how after we'd left the bakery and were laughing and talking and were linked arm-in-arm while walking down the street, I remembered the bashful reply that he gave when I asked him of his preferred type of cheese.

It tumbled from his lips as though it was the only truth in the world, "Feta."

**fin**

_February 2009_


End file.
